Iceland’s unicameral parliament, known in Icelandic as the Alþing (“All-thing”), has just 63 members to represent the country’s 320,000 people.

By comparison, the Czech Republic has one Pirate Party parliamentarian, Germany has 45 state-level Pirate lawmakers (plus, recent party struggles), and Sweden has two representatives of its Pirate Party in the European Parliament. As is the case anywhere Pirates hold elective office, the group still represents a tiny minority in Iceland—most of the seats in the Alþing will go to the center-right Independence Party. In the United States, the Pirate Party has had very limited success and is extremely unlikely to get elected to either the House of Representatives or the Senate.

Birgitta is also one of three activists involved in a WikiLeaks investigation currently underway in the United States. In November 2011, a district court judge found that prosecutors could compel Twitter to give up specific information on the three accounts, including IP addresses, direct messages, and other data. In January 2013, a federal appeals court in Virginia ruled (PDF) that Birgitta and the two others have no right to find out which other companies the government sought information from besides Twitter.

The trio, along with other members of Iceland’s digerati (including Smári McCarthy, who also is one of the organizers of the International Modern Media Initiative), founded the party just five months ago. The Pirate Party at large was founded in Sweden in 2006, focusing on a digital agenda including items such as IP law reform and Internet policies

"We are really very grateful for the [electorate’s] trust," Birgitta told the state broadcaster, RÚV (Google Translate).

Now go to cnn.com, switch to the international edition, go to "Europe," click More" under "Top Euro stories" and let me know if you see anything about Icelandic parliamentary elections (I'm not even talking about the Pirate Party, but more mainstream news: change of power in an European country).

Not really. Unless there is something actually major happening, Ísland is not a major world power. It isn't surprising that a Scandinavian country with less people in it than my neighborhood doesn't get much coverage from CNN.

Not really. Unless there is something actually major happening, Ísland is not a major world power. It isn't surprising that a Scandinavian country with less people in it than my neighborhood doesn't get much coverage from CNN.

Iceland isn't Scandinavian.

Scandinavia is Denmark, Norway and Sweden. Finland and Iceland are one of the 5 Nordic countries (8 if you consider Åland islands, Faroic Islands and Greenland).

Not really. Unless there is something actually major happening, Ísland is not a major world power. It isn't surprising that a Scandinavian country with less people in it than my neighborhood doesn't get much coverage from CNN.

Iceland isn't Scandinavian.

Scandinavia is Denmark, Norway and Sweden. Finland and Iceland are one of the 5 Nordic countries (8 if you consider Åland islands, [Faroe] Islands and Greenland).

Not really. Unless there is something actually major happening, Ísland is not a major world power. It isn't surprising that a Scandinavian country with less people in it than my neighborhood doesn't get much coverage from CNN.

So you are telling us that a news about a stray cat in your neighborhood should be listed in the International edition under "European news"?

I think it's always very interesting, the differences between how smaller, "less-significant" countries vote and organize themselves relative to more populous, "important" countries, especially those that consider themselves superpowers. Countries as far from economic and military history's beaten path as Iceland is are my favorites.

Extremist ideology wins a few seats in the parliament of a country with severe economic problems. What could go wrong?

You might want to give us more details on that, as this is about the Pirate Party, whose policies are all quite reasonable. Also, Iceland is largely considered to be one of the countries which has best recovered, so you might want to specify the country as well.

Extremist ideology wins a few seats in the parliament of a country with severe economic problems. What could go wrong?

I'm sure we're all deathly afraid of what might happen if a third of a million people on an arctic island were to turn to militant software copying and an aggressively relaxed patent system. The horror.

Uh, yeah, that would be a problem, because they would be violating international IP treaties, potentially hosting sites like Megaupload and TPB, ect. It could easily lead to economic sanctions or other issues.

Never said it wouldn't be a problem for Icelanders. But that's their choice to make.

I was posting to (humorously) diffuse Chuckstar's (also humorous) implication that there are worrying connections to be drawn between the content of this article and the mid-century activities of a certain European nation-state. The PP, though further in their direction than most, are hardly "extremist", certainly not violently so.

In case it's still unclear: If Iceland were to elect an all-PP parliament in the future I, a Canadian, would not even slightly increase how much I worry for my future personal safety.

Uh, yeah, that would be a problem, because they would be violating international IP treaties, potentially hosting sites like Megaupload and TPB, ect. It could easily lead to economic sanctions or other issues.

Extremist ideology wins a few seats in the parliament of a country with severe economic problems. What could go wrong?

You might want to give us more details on that, as this is about the Pirate Party, whose policies are all quite reasonable. Also, Iceland is largely considered to be one of the countries which has best recovered, so you might want to specify the country as well.

You may think they are reasonable. Apparently, that would put you in agreement with a small fraction of Iceland.

Actually, its hard to say how much of the population agrees their policies are reasonable. We know that 5% find their policies to be the best choice available, so they would presumably find their policies reasonable. However, there are plenty of reasons why they might find their policies reasonable but not vote for them. One is that they simply prefer another party's policy overall. Another might be that they vote strategically, like in the US, where nobody really likes Republicans or Democrats, but voting otherwise is 'throwing your vote away.' They might not be aware of the party, or they might misunderstand the PP's platform, like you do.

Extremist ideology wins a few seats in the parliament of a country with severe economic problems. What could go wrong?

I'm sure we're all deathly afraid of what might happen if a third of a million people on an arctic island were to turn to militant software copying and an aggressively relaxed patent system. The horror.

Uh, yeah, that would be a problem, because they would be violating international IP treaties, potentially hosting sites like Megaupload and TPB, ect. It could easily lead to economic sanctions or other issues.

Fortunately, they remain powerless.

AFAIK the Pirate Bay is having their domain hosted in Ice Land since a few days.

I wish the USA had a pirate party. Hopefully, these guys can make some difference and get these ridiculous copyright laws relaxed.

Yes. Because without that, we won't have our free movies the world will come to an end.

What a beautiful strawman argument. If you want to encourage people to respect copyright, a big step would be to have copyright laws that are respectable. If nothing I am listening to/watching, etc. will be free from a legal monopoly in my lifetime or likely even in the lifetime of any progeny I may have, it's hard to see this as a fair deal. The fact that anyone who tries to be kind of reasonable gets hit with sanctions is also a bit troubling. For example, a rider to the CTEA allowed small restaurants with a single radio to not have to pay ASCAP to play the radio stations that had already paid ASCAP. A dispute was filed with the WTO, and the US lost, and has to pay money to EU rightsholders. Let me repeat that: the US lost a dispute because it passed a law that allowed some restaurants to avoid paying rightsholders that had already been paid for that particular broadcasting. Such a system can't possibly be deserving of respect, and if anything, it creates an imperative to destroy such a corrupt system before it further damages us technologically and culturally.

Icelander here. There big news isn't that the Pirate Party got such support but that the two parties in power during the decade preceding the collapse got reelected to a majority. The two left-wing ones tasked with recovery from the collapse were ousted.

The Pirate Party would likely have gotten far more of the electorate if it weren't for a huge influx of new parties this election. Our elections are normally between the above four major parties but this time there were an additional 4 (splinter) parties that divided 20% of the vote between them. Unified under a single banner (Pirate or otherwise) would have made them as big as any of the other four.

Edit: Also, Iceland is generally considered Scandinavian for the same reason that Denmark and the Faroe Islands are. It's the linguistic roots. The Scandinavian Peninsula is otherwise just Norway and Sweden.

Icelander here. There big news isn't that the Pirate Party got such support but that the two parties in power during the decade preceding the collapse got reelected to a majority. The two left-wing ones tasked with recovery from the collapse were ousted.

The Pirate Party would likely have gotten far more of the electorate if it weren't for a huge influx of new parties this election. Our elections are normally between the above four major parties but this time there were an additional 4 (splinter) parties that divided 20% of the vote between them. Unified under a single banner (Pirate or otherwise) would have made them as big as any of the other four.

Edit: Also, Iceland is generally considered Scandinavian for the same reason that Denmark and the Faroe Islands are. It's the linguistic roots. The Scandinavian Peninsula is otherwise just Norway and Sweden.

Interesting info- thanks.

When people are fed up they will vote for anyone but the current sitting govt.I was wondering how this party could get elected- but it now makes sense- ticked off voters !

Icelander here. There big news isn't that the Pirate Party got such support but that the two parties in power during the decade preceding the collapse got reelected to a majority. The two left-wing ones tasked with recovery from the collapse were ousted.

The Pirate Party would likely have gotten far more of the electorate if it weren't for a huge influx of new parties this election. Our elections are normally between the above four major parties but this time there were an additional 4 (splinter) parties that divided 20% of the vote between them. Unified under a single banner (Pirate or otherwise) would have made them as big as any of the other four.

Edit: Also, Iceland is generally considered Scandinavian for the same reason that Denmark and the Faroe Islands are. It's the linguistic roots. The Scandinavian Peninsula is otherwise just Norway and Sweden.

I take it that it's relatively easy to run for parliament in Iceland? (compared to say Denmark where we require 21.000 signatures. Which is quite a hurdle.)

Icelander here. There big news isn't that the Pirate Party got such support but that the two parties in power during the decade preceding the collapse got reelected to a majority. The two left-wing ones tasked with recovery from the collapse were ousted.

The Pirate Party would likely have gotten far more of the electorate if it weren't for a huge influx of new parties this election. Our elections are normally between the above four major parties but this time there were an additional 4 (splinter) parties that divided 20% of the vote between them. Unified under a single banner (Pirate or otherwise) would have made them as big as any of the other four.

Edit: Also, Iceland is generally considered Scandinavian for the same reason that Denmark and the Faroe Islands are. It's the linguistic roots. The Scandinavian Peninsula is otherwise just Norway and Sweden.

I take it that it's relatively easy to run for parliament in Iceland? (compared to say Denmark where we require 21.000 signatures. Which is quite a hurdle.)

It was somewhere around 3000 signatures for this election, I think. There was a total of 15 parties this election of which 8 or 9 were new. The more promising ones cannibalized each other.

Regarding the Scandinavian thing, it's mostly just semantics. The settlers came from Norway (modern Icelandic is unchanged from old Norse to the point where we can still read it) and so people call it Scandinavian. Same goes for the Faroese. In a way, it's similar to how Canadians are Americans but they're not 'Americans'.

Icelander here. There big news isn't that the Pirate Party got such support but that the two parties in power during the decade preceding the collapse got reelected to a majority. The two left-wing ones tasked with recovery from the collapse were ousted.

The Pirate Party would likely have gotten far more of the electorate if it weren't for a huge influx of new parties this election. Our elections are normally between the above four major parties but this time there were an additional 4 (splinter) parties that divided 20% of the vote between them. Unified under a single banner (Pirate or otherwise) would have made them as big as any of the other four.

Edit: Also, Iceland is generally considered Scandinavian for the same reason that Denmark and the Faroe Islands are. It's the linguistic roots. The Scandinavian Peninsula is otherwise just Norway and Sweden.

Interesting info- thanks.

When people are fed up they will vote for anyone but the current sitting govt.I was wondering how this party could get elected- but it now makes sense- ticked off voters !

Is it mandatory to vote where you live?

Rob

Not mandatory but voter turnout is generally in the 85% plus range. It's not just ticked off voters though because there is quite a bit of choice in having 4 major parties. The sentiment isn't 'voting the lesser evil' as much as for what you like.

Partisanship obviously runs deep in some families but I do think most people are being sincere. The PP ran on a platform of transparency in politics and not intellectual property as some here seem to think. Lobbyism like you know in the US doesn't exist over here because we call them bribes. It made for a huge scandal a few years back.

Finding a single example of a badly-implemented law is hardly the end of the universe.

The Fairness in Music Licensing Act was well implemented. The problem is that the Berne Convention is a bad implemented treaty, as is TRIPS. So bad that the US rejected it for a century. If we could get rid of the Berne Convention and TRIPS, that would be a big step in the right direction. Then countries like Iceland could direct their policy on what the people want instead of what a group of cartels is shoving down their throats with the force of foreign governments.

Another point of interest is that the Universal Copyright Convention, an alternative solution for copyright reciprocity, had a clause added at the request of Berne Convention members that meant that if they left the Berne Convention, they would get no protection. So, countries who had already signed a more restrictive treaty couldn't elect to instead join a weaker treaty. The Berne Convention is by its very nature anti-democratic, and is causing great losses of cultural and academic heritage because the protection is required to last an obscenely long time.

Quote:

But I know you want your free movies and music, so you'll go around digging up as many such lame examples as you can.

I don't need to make that argument. I'm technologically literate, so if I want free movies and music, I will get free movies and music. It will only get easier overall for me to do so, although I don't deny the possibility of short term shake ups a la megaupload, so maybe a week or two of having to find some alternate sources.

But it doesn't matter how compelling or mind numbingly stupid the policies of copyright maximalists are, you will just pass it off as a lame example and say that I want free movies. I don't care about that or about paying money. I do care about half-assed attempts to cripple technology that only harm legitimate users and actual innovators.

So a US judge says it's okay for the US government to have unfettered access to the computer files of a member of the legislative body of another government. Lucky that Iceland is a tiny country and, as we all know, in politics, size matters. What in the hell can a cottage country do about it?

What a beautiful strawman argument. If you want to encourage people to respect copyright, a big step would be to have copyright laws that are respectable. If nothing I am listening to/watching, etc. will be free from a legal monopoly in my lifetime or likely even in the lifetime of any progeny I may have, it's hard to see this as a fair deal. The fact that anyone who tries to be kind of reasonable gets hit with sanctions is also a bit troubling. For example, a rider to the CTEA allowed small restaurants with a single radio to not have to pay ASCAP to play the radio stations that had already paid ASCAP. A dispute was filed with the WTO, and the US lost, and has to pay money to EU rightsholders. Let me repeat that: the US lost a dispute because it passed a law that allowed some restaurants to avoid paying rightsholders that had already been paid for that particular broadcasting. Such a system can't possibly be deserving of respect, and if anything, it creates an imperative to destroy such a corrupt system before it further damages us technologically and culturally.

Wouldn't the first step to having a pirate party be having people who weren't committing criminal activity being in charge of it?

Oh right. Worthless people are worthless.

Look, here's reality: people pay for licenses. You don't actually buy music, or movies, or similar things. You purchase a copy and a license for what you can use that copy for. Your copy cannot be used for any old purpose - you cannot use it to produce more copies for other people, for instance. You cannot use your copy for public performances either.

I know you have difficulty comprehending this reality. But it is so.

You are whining on the basis of stupid. That is not a valid argument for whining. You have to actually make a real point.

Extremist ideology wins a few seats in the parliament of a country with severe economic problems. What could go wrong?

I don't know anything about the Icelandic party, but the Australian Pirate Party is anything but extremist.

In my opinion, they are the only party in this country who actually understands how intellectual property actually works and everything they say fits in perfectly with what pretty much every IP law journalist and IP lawyer in the world has been saying for years.

Some individual party members (and certainly supporters) have extreme views, but the actual goals and efforts of the party itself are perfectly rational and sensible.

The current state of intellectual property is a mess, and governments need to stop listening to corporate and industry lobbying efforts to haul in more money at the expensive of culture and innovation, which is the exact opposite of what IP laws were originally written to achieve.

Unfortunately, the party name here in California is classic irony. More government in school, more government force in income redistribution, more government in healthcare, more government just about everywhere. This are hardly a radical ideas mates.

What a beautiful strawman argument. If you want to encourage people to respect copyright, a big step would be to have copyright laws that are respectable. If nothing I am listening to/watching, etc. will be free from a legal monopoly in my lifetime or likely even in the lifetime of any progeny I may have, it's hard to see this as a fair deal. The fact that anyone who tries to be kind of reasonable gets hit with sanctions is also a bit troubling. For example, a rider to the CTEA allowed small restaurants with a single radio to not have to pay ASCAP to play the radio stations that had already paid ASCAP. A dispute was filed with the WTO, and the US lost, and has to pay money to EU rightsholders. Let me repeat that: the US lost a dispute because it passed a law that allowed some restaurants to avoid paying rightsholders that had already been paid for that particular broadcasting. Such a system can't possibly be deserving of respect, and if anything, it creates an imperative to destroy such a corrupt system before it further damages us technologically and culturally.

Wouldn't the first step to having a pirate party be having people who weren't committing criminal activity being in charge of it?

Oh right. Worthless people are worthless.

Look, here's reality: people pay for licenses. You don't actually buy music, or movies, or similar things. You purchase a copy and a license for what you can use that copy for. Your copy cannot be used for any old purpose - you cannot use it to produce more copies for other people, for instance. You cannot use your copy for public performances either.

I know you have difficulty comprehending this reality. But it is so.

You are whining on the basis of stupid. That is not a valid argument for whining. You have to actually make a real point.

That may be the way things are right now, but they are hardly the basis of reality. If it was basic reality that people can't copy what belongs to others, then we wouldn't need copyright law would we? No, we have copyright law because it has been deemed necessary to contradict reality. The reality of it is that people very much can copy and distribute any content they please. We have copyright law to tell people they're not allowed to. That's also why DRM exists, to circumvent reality. To make what is easily copied into something that is hard to copy. The only person whining on the basis of stupid is you, Tit Drag.

Second of all, you accuse people of being criminals for violating a civil law and all without any shred of verifiable evidence that they have commited such an act to warrant being called a criminal. Why don't you prove that the people whom you call criminals have actually commited the crimes you claim they are guilty of or do you just like to commit libel? But I forget, you don't believe in innocent until proven guilty, everyone that disagrees with you is clearly a criminal seeking to justify their criminal behavior despite any actual evidence to support that assumption. Do you know what you call someone that makes claim that are not supportable by evidence or contrary to reality? They are called a "liar". These are dishonest people that don't care about truth and fact, but to satisfy their personal motives by any means necessary. Now do us all a big favor and go have discussions with people that agree with you. At least then you won't have to lie and launch personal attacks, they believe the same tripe that you do.